At Church of the Resurrection this June we are working through a sermon series asking what God has to say about five relevant topics (politics, health, money, our bodies, and how we spend our time). I am going to write a blog post about each topic as we work our way through each of them.
What does God say about politics?
“If God is real, why does he align perfectly with our views? We should expect God to challenge us on what we think is right somewhere.” – Tim Keller
This is a great quote to start us off. Often we impose our thoughts on God, saying “I think God __________.” The reality is that we only know what God thinks because he has chosen to reveal himself to us. He has revealed himself to us at many times and in many ways – to Adam and Eve in the garden, to Moses in the burning bush, to the prophets, and most of all through his son Jesus Christ. And you and I know him because all of these things have been written down in the Bible. How do we know what God has to say? We look to the Bible.
As we look at each topic it is imperative that we do our best to set aside our personal prejudices and understand that if God is real – and we think he is – then he will disagree with us somewhere. We don’t get to make him in our image. We must conform our thoughts to his.
What we will find each week as we take these questions to the Bible is that the Bible is not a comprehensive guide for life. The Bible is God’s progressive1 revelation about himself from the creation of the world in Genesis, to the choice of Abram to the father of many nations, to the life of Israel, through the life of Jesus, through the beginning of the Church, and the book of Revelation itself, which gives us a glimpse of what is to come. The Bible isn’t really a book, it is a library with different genres: narrative histories, law, wisdom, poetry, prophecy, and letters. Nowhere in this library is a section on politics or monetary policy or foreign policy.
Before we answer the question “What does God say about politics?” we must establish what the Bible actually is. It’s God’s gracious revelation about himself so that we would seek him and know him.2 One other thing we should establish before we answer the question is that we have a human tendency to make matters into black and white issues, and God rarely deals in black and white. He challenges us to think in shades of gray. It’s not very often that we have either/or scenarios in the Bible. More often we have both/and.
Okay, with those things established, let’s jump in and look at some parts of Scripture that might influence how we should think about politics. In Jeremiah chapter 29, God gives instructions to his people in exile. It would have been understandable if they had assumed that as exiles they should just ride it out until their restored to their homeland, to hunker down and wait for God’s deliverance. But God instructed them to “build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat their produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease. But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.”
This is a both/and scenario. They are both resident aliens, and God is commanding them to seek the welfare of the city. We see something similar from 1 Peter where he addresses the recipients of his letter as sojourners and exiles. He’s not speaking in an ethnic sense, but in a spiritual one. All those who call Jesus Lord have our citizenship in heaven. We are to live in this world and know that we are not of this world. One writer described it this way: when we come up from the waters of baptism, it’s as if the church hands us our green card. To be united with Christ means being a resident alien. And yet, God calls us to seek the welfare of the city, to live as if we’re here for the long haul.
Peter calls us to keep [our] conduct among the Gentiles honorable, so that when they speak against us as evildoers, they may see our good deeds and glorify God.3 One of our values as a church is to seek renewal in our community. We do so because God calls us to, and each bit of healing they see through our work testifies to the healing work of our God.
In Mark 12, the Pharisees team up with the Herodians in an attempt to trap Jesus. They say politics makes for strange bedfellows and this is certainly an example of that. After ingratiating him saying, “Teacher, we know that you are true and do not care about anyone's opinion. For you are not swayed by appearances, but truly teach the way of God,” they continue by asking, “Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar or not? Should we pay them, or should we not?” They had no interest in seeking his wisdom, but thought they had trapped him with the question. If he had said they should not pay the tax, he would have retained the favor of the people, but been guilty of treason. If he said they should pay the tax, he would have lost favor with the people. The very coin they would use to pay the tax bore a graven image of Caesar and that coin recognized Caesar as a god. This was blasphemous, and Jesus couldn’t possibly endorse this.
And yet, Jesus blows all our minds. He responds, “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” What does he mean? As always, Jesus is making a really sophisticated argument. He exposes the hypocrisy of the Pharisees for using these coins in the first place since they’re an abomination. Jesus says, “Look at the image on the coin. It’s Caesar. So give him back the coin he is due.”
But while we’re talking about images, what does God say about us? That we are made in the image and likeness of God. So if we owe Caesar things bearing his likeness, what does that say about our bodies and our lives? Remember these famous words from Romans 12: I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship” Jesus is saying the same thing here. Our bodies and our lives are to be living sacrifices to God.
While we’re on the topic of Romans, there is more in the book of Romans about how we deal with government than in most parts of the Bible, and it largely agrees with what our reading from First Peter says. Peter says, “Be subject for the Lord's sake to every human institution, whether it be to the emperor as supreme,or to governors as sent by him to punish those who do evil and to praise those who do good.” Paul writes in Romans 13: Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment.
Government isn’t a necessary evil, we’re told by the scriptures that secular governments have been instituted by God. That raises the question though: if we are to be subject to these human institutions because God has appointed them to punish those who do evil, what happens when those very institutions “become destructive of these ends?”
Do those words sound familiar to you? “Destructive of these ends?” Let me put them in a deeper context:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government…
These, of course, are words from the Declaration of Independence. Let’s remember the Roman governments Peter and Paul were writing about in First Peter and Romans respectively were far from just, but they still urged obedience and submissiveness to these authorities. This raises the question: If we are to be subject to governing authorities, does that mean the American Revolution was sinful? Does this mean the civil rights movement was sinful?
Remember when I said interpreting scripture is more about both/and rather than either/or? We hold certain things in tension. Yes, we subject ourselves to the governing authorities, but there comes a time when we say, “We must obey God rather than men.”This famous quote comes from Peter himself in Acts 5. Peter and John had been preaching in the Temple, day after day. They were arrested and an angel of the Lord opened the doors of the jail in the middle of the night, freeing them. They went right back to the Temple to preach. When the Jewish authorities arrested Peter again and said, “We strictly charged you not to teach in this name, yet here you have filled Jerusalem with your teaching, and you intend to bring this man's blood upon us.” And Peter responds, “We must obey God rather than men.” There comes a time when these principles come into conflict so seriously, that the God of justice and mercy cries out for the action of his people on behalf of the powerless.
You may be wondering how any of this applies to our upcoming presidential election. Does God want you to vote Republican or Democrat? Or independent?
If only it were only so clear. Life is complicated. In life, there are no solutions, only tradeoffs. We have two flawed parties with two flawed candidates. I’m sorry if this is news to you. As far as political systems, there are no perfect, Christian systems, only tradeoffs. Capitalism has been the engine that has lifted billions of people out of poverty, but our instantiation of it has its flaws. We saw voluntary socialism in the book of Acts where there was not a needy person among them. People gladly gave what they had to support those in need, but this isn’t an endorsement of Communism on a large scale.
It’s not simple enough that the Bible endorses one form of government over another. The Bible doesn’t endorse voting Republican or Democrat. Let me say this: be careful about becoming too involved with a particular party. What do I mean? We are called to be salt and light. By all means, join a party, and influence that party with biblical values. But if we become too blindly partisan, voting for party over principle, we lose the ability to influence that party. If the party we vote for knows they have our vote no matter what, why would they work to get our vote? Why would they bend their platform to please the Lord? So if you’re going to be a Republican, influence them for good. Same thing with the Democratic party. If you want to join, by all means, join. But don’t let them count on your vote so that they don’t have to cater to the principles of biblical justice and mercy.
And by all means remember that you are resident aliens. Build houses and live in them. Join political parties, but remember that all this is going away. Think about this tension in Scripture. God urges all of us to prudence, to plan ahead, to save, and to be wise with our money. He also calls us to be generous and to look out for the needy. Do you remember the parable of the rich fool? This is from Luke 20: Someone in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me.” But he said to him, “Man, who made me a judge or arbitrator over you?” And he said to them, “Take care, and be on your guard against all covetousness, for one's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.” And he told them a parable, saying, “The land of a rich man produced plentifully, and he thought to himself, ‘What shall I do, for I have nowhere to store my crops?’ And he said, ‘I will do this: I will tear down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, “Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.”’ But God said to him, ‘Fool! This night your soul is required of you, and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’ So is the one who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God.”
The person who approaches Jesus wants Jesus, who cares deeply about justice, to be the arbiter in this case. And Jesus is like, “Dude, all this stuff is going away. Be careful about getting too invested in it.” When we face Jesus, he won’t pat us on the back because we were good Republicans or Democrats. He’ll ask us how we treated the hungry and the thirsty and the naked, the outcast and the refugee.
As we live in the world while not being of the world we don’t opt out of politics and sit on the sideline as the world burns. We don’t say, “Well, in the end God will make all things right.” We don’t sit this stuff out. We know that Jesus will come again on the last day and make all things right, but God wishes justice to roll down like waters today. Injustice can’t wait for Christ to return and sort this all out.
We also don’t lose our saltiness, putting all our hope in politics to make all things right. We don’t fall for the trap of the easy answer because we know difficult problems do not call for simple solutions. We maintain our humility, always going back to Scripture. We can’t be so active on our crusades that we don’t stop to check and make sure we’re still on the right side. We need to remember that we have this human propensity to bend God to our will rather than bending our will to God’s.
President Lincoln was once asked if God was on his side. He answered, “Sir, my concern is not whether God is on our side, my greatest concern is to be on God’s side, for God is always right.” This should be a constant thing in our lives. We should always be checking our own intuitions with what God has to say in the Bible.
What does God have to say about politics? A lot. What does God require of you? “To do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with your God.”4 To “honor everyone. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honor the emperor.”5 To remember that we are strangers in this land. To render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and unto God what is God’s.
What does this mean as far as casting a vote? Part of being made in the image of God is that you have been given a mind and a conscience. But to operate our minds and consciences without input from God’s Word is to do this irresponsibly. The only way we can vote knowing we are being faithful is to be in the Scriptures regularly, praying for the Spirit’s illumination. God’s will is not unknown or far away but is near us. As we ask what God has to say about politics, we must constantly be looking to God’s Word for the answers.
Footnotes:
1 By “progressive revelation” I don’t mean politically progressive, I mean bit by bit, a little at a time.
2 Acts 17:27
3 1 Peter 2:12
4 Micah 6:8
5 First Peter 2:17